Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods sends four Black American veterans back into the Vietnamese jungle decades after their war, chasing the remains of a fallen comrade and a cache of gold they buried as young soldiers and never recovered.
What is Da 5 Bloods about?
Four men who once fought side by side reunite in present-day Vietnam, now grey-haired and carrying very different lives back home. Their stated purpose is to locate the remains of the squad leader they lost and bring him home for a proper burial. Their unspoken purpose is the gold they hid during the war and left behind. The trip starts in the tourist-friendly city and pushes outward into the terrain where they once fought, and the further they travel the harder the past presses in: old resentments between the men, the weight of what they saw and did, and the unresolved question of what that war meant for Black soldiers asked to fight for a country that treated them as second-class citizens. The group gains companions and makes enemies along the way, and the treasure hunt turns into a test of loyalty, greed and conscience. The land itself, still seeded with unexploded ordnance, becomes as dangerous as any human adversary.
About the cast
Delroy Lindo heads the ensemble, joined by Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr., with Mélanie Thierry among the supporting players. The film gives its older actors full dramatic range rather than nostalgic cameos, and Lindo's performance drew wide attention when the film was released.
Context & significance
Released in 2020, Da 5 Bloods is a late-career Spike Lee feature that fuses several modes the director has worked in before: the war picture, the treasure-hunt adventure and the pointed political essay. Scenes set in the present alternate with wartime flashbacks, and the fictional story is placed against the real history of the Vietnam era and the civil rights struggle at home, with the contradiction of Black soldiers serving abroad while facing discrimination at home running through the whole film. Running a little over two and a half hours, it shifts between registers, from reunion comedy to combat thriller to grief drama. The United States production sits in the drama and war genres and is one of the most talked-about American films of its year on K-Time.
Watching Da 5 Bloods on Ktime
Da 5 Bloods streams on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so viewers can choose Spike Lee's original English-language soundtrack with Farsi subtitles or the fully dubbed version. Reading this page is free; watching requires a K-Time account login. The player and menus are in Farsi, built for Persian-speaking viewers living outside Iran.